The crisis of child care is a specific cruelty that strikes at working parents and their young children in the United States. It is at the intersection of many injustices. This point of failure involves poverty, neoliberal deprivation, patriarchal family structures, racial inequality and more, sited at the intersection of several of capitalism’s most glaring inequities. Many are not provided with options for child-care, and the patchwork of private services that do exist is deplorably costly and of disturbingly poor quality. These deficiencies introduce multiplying financial, logistical and emotional stressors into the lives of working-class parents, particularly women and people of color, along with grave outcomes for child development — and the social world writ large.
The cause is the state’s effective abdication of this critical societal function to private enterprise. As is often the situation, the venerated free marketplace has utterly failed in its ability to adequately provide for public necessities, and the impeded provision of public support has proved detrimental to human flourishing. The COVID-19 pandemic engraved those existing fissures more deeply — yet the execrable conditions in the child care sector long predate the pandemic. These conditions are the result of neoliberal capitalism, which has taken away social welfare to make way for profit and free-market idolatry. Yet there are advocates and committed organizers who have a vision of a more humane and just world — and who, despite towering obstacles, have set out on their tireless work of bringing it to fruition.
A Costly Need
Child care is a social necessity that is inextricable. This has been made more urgent by systematic inequality and poverty. Many adults have had to take on additional jobs. The United States has many young mothers. nearly two-thirds participate inThe workforce. The same goes for the 8.4 million children below 5 years of age. need child care — while only 5.9 million slots exist.
Research has confirmedThe benefits of quality careThese are the most formative years of your life. Early intervention has a significant impact on well being: Cognitive and language skills, emotional functioning, socialization, and socialization improvements all go hand in hand with the relief offered by child care for workers, especially women. Yet the inverse is also true: Nonexistent, inattentive — or worse, abusive — child care resonates throughout lives, and across generational time spans. It is vital that children receive empathy and learning enrichment. This will allow them to thrive later.
The status quo in child care in the U.S. is not a good thing. It is a burden on new working-class parents that is multifarious and severe. The Family Medical Leave Act provides only limited paid time for early-life and pregnancy care. This is the main reason for the difficult circumstances. subject to stringent constraints. (The U.S. stands utterly alone among developed nations — in fact, among nearly All other nations — in failing to guarantee paid time off for parental leave.) Once the time they were allowed to take off has expired, new parents will need to arrange care for their preK children. They must navigate a confusing, unregulated, and often expensive network private daycare options.
The average cost of child care represents 17.1 percent of the national median household income — and DoubleAt the lowest income families, an untenable 35 percentEarnings This expense, which can be effectively equivalent to a second rental, is simply out of reachFor innumerable families. In another stark illustration of the outlay: “In most states, putting a baby in a licensed child-care facility costs more than in-state college tuition,” reports Bloomberg.Federal funding is insufficient to address these exorbitant costs. only 15 percent received any subsidy. (Comparablely limited state funding means that preschool costs are often little different.) Other countries with wealthy capitalists devote an average of $14,000Estimated annual public spending per child. (Norway spends almost $30,000, Hungary a little more than $7,000. Surprisingly, the U.S. only spends $500 The U.S.’s wealth seems to be matched only by its indifference when it comes down to working people.
Unaffordable or unobtainable, or not sanctioned
Parents are put under more stress by the difficulty in finding affordable care. A vastly inadequate supply has created “child care deserts.” A 2016 surveyThe Center for American Progress found that only 25% of the available supply could be used by infants and toddlers in 40 states. For the latter, it’s worse, as CAP points out: “Licensed child care is more than three times as scarce for children ages 0 to 2 than it is for those ages 3 to 5.”
Often, there are simply no options. But parents who lackFor alternatives — many of them women of color — have then faced stigma, censure and even incarceration for leaving children while at work or in job interviews. These stories have drawn a lot of jeers from the public, who have reacted in anger to the story and omitted to consider the structural factors and other impossible circumstances that low-income parents have faced.
But the failures of child-care are not over. In an article for The New RepublicJonathan Cohn documents the tragic abuses and tragedies that laissez-faire has led to. The programs that are available These areBoth affordable and available often unlicensed and unregulated. Daycares of “abysmally” low quality predominate. “A 2007 survey by the National Institute of Child Health Development deemed the majority of operations to be ‘fair’ or ‘poor’ — only 10 percent provided high-quality care,” writes Cohn. Yet “just thirty-nine states in the wealthiest country in the world even Create a program that rates the quality of day-care centers.”
This lack of oversight can lead to negligence which can, in the worst cases, result in the single most disastrous occurrence for any parent. Staffing issues, facilities in poor condition, poorly trained workers, inattention to health and safety — all of these factors result in ghastly statistics. “The death rate of children enrolled in home-based day care — which is far more likely to be unlicensed than a center-based program — is twelve times that of center-based care,” Cohn writes. Poor oversight and a dependence on self-reporting can cause severe harm to any one child. the true numbersIt is not clear what the impact of injuries on deaths would be.
Caregiver Exploitation
Daycare staff,They will, for their part. low salariesWorkplace conditions that are difficult, long hours, and miserable. “To the extent that child care is affordable for parents at all, this is only because the child care workforce effectively subsidizes child care costs with low worker wages,” CAP notes.
This industry has some of the lowest wages in the country,In fact. Daycares in 2020 were almost entirely staffed by women. median payA minimum wage of $12.24 an hr. Median annual income hover in the $20,000 range; the averages in high cost-of-living states don’t exceed $40,000. A worker who has worked less than one year. can average as low as $9.50 an hour — but even 20 or more years of experience might net them only $11.97. These are poverty-level numbers, “even though 87% of [childcare staff] have some form of higher education,” reports Bloomberg.
A disproportionate amount of people also contributes to the problem. 40 percent of staff are women of color,Worker stratification is done by a racial wage gapBlack caregivers earn on average $0.77 per hour less than white caregivers. The ratio of caregivers to children under 5 years old can be dramatic. In some states, older age group ratios reach as high as 25:1. It’s unsurprising, then, that workers have fled the profession — though the resulting staffing crisis has only amplified all the aforementioned stresses, miring the sector in its present unconscionable state.
As it is prone to do, the pandemic has made all of these failures worse. Child care was immensely fragileEven before COVID-19’s ruptures, the availability has been heightened. staffing crisesWith many daycares shutteringWorkers leaving the profession. A 2020 surveyThe National Association for the Education of Young Children discovered that the majority of daycares have incurred significant new operational costs. An estimated 86 percent are serving fewer children than they did before the pandemic — a reflection of closures, reduced resources, and parental job losses. Some federal grants and subsidiesDespite being disbursed to support the industry, they are insufficient. (During the pandemic’s first year, child care workers were also denied vaccine priority despite their putative “essential” status.)
Of working parents, two out of threeBecause of the pandemic, many parents had to change their child-care arrangements. These conditions have been mitigated to some extent as the world adapts to COVID, but the system’s fragility in a crisis is telling. While the convergence of COVID and child care was “a global fiasco,” subsidies and social supports of many kindsCanada AustraliaJapan, South Korea, and Europe all saw a better outcome. Among women, however, there has been a steady decline in job opportunities. was worse in the neoliberal strongholds of the U.S.U.K. Some of the pandemic-inflicted harm to U.S. childcare cannot be reversed without drastic reform. could be permanent. Again, the lack of a resilient publicly funded system — and a blanket aversion to redistributive policy — is to blame.
First Steps Toward Universality
Many envision how these harsh conditions might be different — how we might design policy that assigns human life and thriving intrinsic value, ParticularlyThe well-being and health of children. There are historical precedents in the U.S. Meagan Day writes in Jacobin,The Comprehensive Child Development Act of 1971As a way to address poverty and neglect and abuse, the bill would have created universal daycare programs and development centers, preschools, and preschools. This better future was denied by Richard Nixon, his fundamentalist constituents.
Democratic Socialists of America organizers have set their sights to revive the idea. In fact, there’s already a contemporary success to point to: Measure 26-214 in Oregon’s Multnomah County, developed by Portland DSA and a local coalition and passed in 2020, will institute a fully universal preschool program, funded by a tax on high incomes. The victory hinted at the popularity of the idea, and provided a model that organizers are eager to replicate — and significantly expand.
“We’re looking to make child care — inclusive of infant care, preschool and before and after-school programs — a public good,” said organizer the co-chair of the DSA-LA Childcare for All campaign and a onetime child care worker herself. (Farzana refused to give her full name out of fear of workplace reprisals. DSA Los Angeles recently passed an ordinance to pursue universal child care. a chapter priority. The first Childcare for All canvassing campaigns in the city are just beginning.
Organizers in Columbus, Ohio’s DSA chapter have also officially began developing their own campaign to mitigate the woeful realities of child care in their city. Rita Hallaveld is a campaign steward in Columbus DSA’s Child Care Priority Campaign. “In Franklin County,” she said, “there are not enough child care center slots to cover all infants and toddlers. In Columbus, a single mother of two making $15 an hour spends over half her income on child care, without enough to cover rent, food, etc.” Hallaveld said that the Columbus DSA organizers “hope to really engage residents and highlight all the ways that child care is a common good to help get everyone on board.”
In Los Angeles, organizers’ efforts have already earned positive responses. While their goals are sweeping, they are popular ones, “easily understood and widely felt,” Farzana W. told Truthout. “So far, the response from the public has been quite supportive. The need for reliable, quality child care is something that’s intuitively understood by many, partly due to its immediate relevance to people’s lives.” She echoed deep concerns about availability, cost, quality and staff wages.
Both campaigns are still in the early stages of their work. Hallaveld described a phase of intensive policy planning in Columbus DSA’s working group. This includes analyzing tax structures and funding sources. Such ambitious measures will require strong alliances, and Columbus organizers are hoping to build “a diverse grassroots coalition made up of parents, child care educators, and residents in our area,” Hallaveld commented. “We want the voices that are most impacted to be a part of this process from the beginning. Child care providers are disproportionately women of color, so we want to center their voices throughout the process … Eventually we hope to put the measure on the ballot, so we’ll be doing a lot of work to engage voters.”
Farzana W. pointed out that coalition building is also important in the short term. She also recommended continued outreach and canvassing, community surveys, research, policy planning, and activating parent/care staff organizers. All this while assessing and refining their methods.
While both campaigns remain nascent at this stage, if the success of the pre-K ballot measure in Portland indicates anything, it’s that deeply committed advocates can realize long-shot ambitions. Organizers see those ambitions as part of a holistic vision of a socialism that meets people’s real needs: “We want to change the reputation of the left in Los Angeles,” said Farzana W., “from one that’s insulated, online and foreign to one that’s approachable, reliable, homegrown and advancing demands that people care deeply about.”
A publicly funded universal system would allow for early intervention in improving well being, which is compatible with multiple social needs. Socialists should be able to address this moral crisis, which is one of injustice and inequalities that punishes those most vulnerable. As Farzana W. reiterates, “We want to remove the profit motive from the child care industry [and] reestablish the public good as the core of left politics.”
